I often refer to blog content as marketing fuel that will continue to garner traffic and draw in an audience over time – if marketed correctly. Content should be interesting and relevant to your target audience, and another crucial element to keep in mind is how you distribute your content. Far too often, brands miss out on potential readers merely because they aren’t using the right channels to reach their target, or they aren’t using the right channels appropriately.

With this 10-week blog marketing schedule, my hope is to illustrate exactly how strategic content pushing can help you expand your brand and grow your audience.

Week 1: Share it on social media

Always publish your new blog posts across all of your major social media accounts. Be sure to tailor your content and captions to flow with each social network. For example, if you are posting content to Instagram, make sure you include a photo that fits the size and stylization of Instagram. Otherwise, your photo can come out looking too zoomed in or out, and it will not have the same effect as you originally intended.

Week 2: Curate It

Content curation is a great way potentially to get your content in front of other bloggers and online influencers. Influencers typically use networks like these to stay up to date on fresh topics and to find relevant content to share and write about with their readers. Think of curation as free advertising- if someone likes your content enough to share it, they are helping you reach a new audience you may have never been introduced to. Be sure to include good descriptions and tag your posts appropriately so that it gets in front of the right people.

Week 3: Share it with Social Groups

You should seek out and join niche online groups like Linked Groups, Facebook Groups, and Google+ Communities. These groups can become an essential part of your content sharing strategy because everyone within the group shares a common interest and you will be putting your content in front of people who care about it. Share each new blog post to these groups that may be interested in the topic you are writing about and make sure to follow-up with comments and respond to other users who engage with your content. Look at this as a chance to do some digital networking.

Week 4: Share It with Email Subscribers

Whether you compose a weekly or monthly email newsletter, always be sure to include your most recent blog posts. This is an excellent way to bring those email subscribers back into your conversion funnel and give them a new reason to visit your site. Depending on your newsletter and blogging frequency you may want to include more than one blog post in each issue; one that is most recent and maybe one or two from a few months prior. Recycling content is an excellent way to reach readers that may have missed it from before.

Week 5: Republish It

Now that your blog post has spent some time living on your website, it’s time to let it spread its wings on other networks. That’s right; I’m talking about creating a complete clone of the article and publishing it on another network. “But isn’t that duplicate content?” Yes, it is duplicate content, but if done correctly, the benefit of increased exposure and referral traffic is well worth it.

How do you republish correctly? All you have to do is make sure to link the republished article back to your original version (either at the top or bottom of the republished article). This will help show readers and different search engines where the source of the content is located. It's also recommended to wait till Google indexes the version on your website. That is why I placed this strategy at week 5.

Be sure to use relevant tags to ensure it gets to the right audience within the network.

Week 6: Advertise It

With advertising, the exposure of this content can become virtually limitless. Through advertising, you can choose to target simply people who have already been to your website via retargeting or you can decide to reach the thousands of people who might benefit from the content, but would otherwise have never seen it. The budget allotment and audience size is completely up to you and will vary from brand to brand. Plan out your advertising strategy and figure out the demographics of who you want to target beforehand- otherwise you will be wasting money on advertising to the wrong audience.

Week 7: Be Helpful

Unfortunately, most brands don’t take into consideration how much of a difference it can make when you interact with your audience. There are people actively searching for your content, and you can join in on the conversation… they are called “social” networks after all. Always be responsive and engage with your followers. Respond to messages or questions as quickly as possible and interact with your followers when they comment on your post. Not only does this help you develop a closer relationship with your readers, but it shows them that you care.

Week 8: Outreach

Did you reference a third party via a link, image or quote in your blog post? If so, now is a good time to reach out to them and let them know about it. Brands and individuals will typically be flattered that you have decided to include them and will likely share your content on their social media profiles. This is an excellent way to increase your exposure if you are a smaller brand referencing bigger brands that have a large following. This will also increase your credibility if you reference others that are well known to your readers.

Some examples of where you can begin your Outreach Strategy include:

Email 3rd party mentioned in the blog post.

Email other websites that may be interested in your article. For example, if you wrote an article that helps startups. Email startup-centric websites.

Contact your influencer’s list (hopefully you keep one).

Week 9: Repurpose It as Another Medium

This strategy might require a little more work, but it can be well worth the extra effort. There are many ways you can repurpose your content and publish it in another format that might appeal to different audiences. Try turning your step-by-step blog post into a presentation and publish it on Slideshare or convert your study into an easy to digest infographic and publish it on sites like visual.ly.

Repurposing your blog post into another media format is an easy way to breathe new life into your existing content.

Week 10: Share It Again on Social Media!

Yep, that’s right! Share your post again across all of your social media accounts, except this time, re-word the content and include a different image to give it a different angle. Most of your followers probably didn’t see it the first time and some of those who did might have meant to read it but forgot. When you share your post again and give it new life, you're giving yourself a chance to reach different readers than before with your existing content.

The Benefits Go Way Beyond 10 Weeks!

If you commit to following this schedule correctly, you should be able to get a full year’s worth of traffic from just this one blog post. By now you’re probably reaping SEO benefits, and this should continue for some time. To keep the momentum going, all you have to do is revisit your post again next year and give it an update- whether it’s adding information or changing existing information. Then, repeat the steps for weeks 1 - 10 all over again and voila!

Benefits to expect after executing this 10-week strategy:

Social Media

More followers

Increased social engagement

Increased referral traffic

SEO

Updated and fresh content

Increased topic relevancy

More Backlinks

Branding

More online brand mentions

Increased networking opportunities

Connects other channels back to your branded website

Sales

Fuel for the top of your sales funnel

Ping existing contacts

Gives sales team more materials

Conclusion

If you can get this much success from just one blog post, imagine what blogging on a regular basis can do for your online marketing efforts. It is a smart idea to keep your website updated with new information on a steady basis. At the end of the day, quality is more important than quantity, so it is never smart to post content just to have simply something posted. Try to come up with a realistic schedule for your content creation and as long as you can post consistently, it doesn’t matter whether you post weekly or monthly, you will build an audience steadily over time.